Keynes was a little more direct: "The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up."
Social work, infrastructure repairs, mental health services.
But all the effort coalesces around BIG Corp. and Douche Co. needs first
Somehow we’re convinced that Bezos and Koch’s are more important than our neighbors
Some looney economists will tell you it’s proven in physics these people are just better
Ignoring the history of violent imperialism and collusion, and oppression that prevented and neutered whole swaths of people from catching up or getting ahead
My take is humans are ignorant animals who are emotionally captured by novelty and special interests keep peddling it to stoke that dopamine buzz
Then when you read in open access government documents they’ve been studying exactly that since WW1, and handing that research to unis who turned it into journalism, advertising, marketing, and management courses, you don’t go “oh deep state!” You go holy shit are we dumb. This is right in front of our faces, no conspiracy theory needed. Documented in official record, in plain view, how government has been dictating what we work on in the land of the free
The first topic that got me onto this pattern: was doing a research paper on thorium reactors since they were all buzzwordy a few years ago
In the 50s they were THE leading effort for energy
That all stopped when a Naval officer realized submarines could be equipped with quieter nuclear engines and weapons and be parked on the coast of whenever undetected
Thorium research was archived and we got to build unstable, by comparison, reactors as a result
And then you see it’s like that all over the historical record from the era
And you realize Bezos and Koch’s aren’t special. They were lucky to be alive now in a heavily curated system with a plain paper trail
My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist specializing in early intervention. She gets paid bupkis by the children's hospital but working super interesting cases. She gets paid reasonably by the county for providing homecare to some kids who really need help as the county is the Medicaid payor of last resort and the kids really need help. She gets paid handsomely by private parties, but the work is often dull.
I'm not sure people work at the corps because the pay is better. I suspect many are attracted by some of the crazy problems on offer.
I don’t mean to suggest people literally consider them special in thought (though there are folks that do believe wealthy folks are divine).
But an objective view, minus culture bias, of economic activity would show a lot of activity swirling into Bezos’s bank accounts
What are Bezos ideas? Selling books online. Today that seems rather quaint, so yeah it was a different thing in 199-whenever
But that’s it. Everything else has been curated around him — cloud and such, he didn’t invent shared compute time.
But the system inherently protects that now. Ownership is the root of power. And the public, through government, has taken on debt to prop up ownership of new ideas and achievements as described in the anecdote about nuclear subs
IBM refused to invest in transistor computers. So the government did. And gifted it to IBM for mass production.
There’s a paper trail to tell a narrative that shows Bezos, etc, got lucky to live now, after all this government invention
And now he just says work on cloud and homes for me with 25 toilets and that’s how it goes. He’s that special in the system that he can command such
But he’s not elected. He’s not divine. And the species has plenty of demands that aren’t related to what he needs.
I’m picking on Bezos, but to me the notion applies to any super rich “my great grandkids can retire on inheritance.”
Those are the conversations we should be having.
I’ve tutored kids in comm college, algebra and basic coding, who can absolutely build web apps and shit, but all their lives assume adulthood is pragmatic acquiescence their future
Not working with the neighbors they grew up knowing, but for elites a world away
Pragmatic acquiescence has us literally discussing the value of Bezos and the stock market and not opioid addiction, and mental health — where there is plenty of demand
"All demand is real demand" is true only when the demand is not intentionally manipulated.
We have more than enough "capital". There is no shortage of (completely made up virtual) "money". There always is plenty of money for any worthwhile project - because it is created new for that new project. And if the economy is in trouble because "money!" the government steps in and through intermediaries creates a few trillion, see last crisis. So, please clarify for me, how does anything "suck away" capital from useful endeavors? According all that I read the last decade "money" is scrambling to find even half-decent places to invest itself.
The government GIVES you the money in the first place, you would be nothing living in a mud hut in the swamp without the "evil government". It's not "your" money to begin with. If you want to know what is "yours" go to the middle of the forest and live there, all the stone tools and grass huts you manage to build are all yours, no "stealing" from government. Everything you have you owe to luck of birth, that you were not born nearer the beginning of humanity but today. You live off of network effects of connected humanity in time and space. Don't give me that BS of "your money". Everything you are is 99.999999999999999999% NOT made by you.
By the way, we have had a HUGE increase in money over real economy for decades - and only very low inflation. Your ignorance is a bit too extreme for my taste.
But not everyone is suited for that work, much less qualified to perform those services, and perhaps most importantly, not everyone WANTS to.
Raise the salaries for those professions and more might, and of course with a UBI people are less incentivized by earnings to get into a specific job.
Even if someone is working in a job that de facto amounts to doing just that, it should be covered up so that this fact isn't obvious and that a person can reasonably choose to ignore the truth and convince themselves that their job has some real value. Which is actually done, all kinds of internal propaganda, glorious mission statements, etc.
Ah you see, this is why you have one person doing the digging, and another doing the filling! This way, each man goes home satisfied.
Probably a motivator to get a better / real job? I certainly prefer that over UBI
We have a lack of real productive jobs that makes a difference.
This results in the rise of the pointless job which is soul crushing.
The answer is not to just get a real productive job. Because the lack of those is the source of the problem.
It would be like if someone said they don't want to have chemotherapy because its painful. And you said... easy, if you don't want chemotherapy don't get cancer.
Europe can start reconstructing all the ruins of castles, monasteries and cathedrals; for example Napoleon destroyed quite a lot of them and most didn't recover. Or just tear down all the ugly buildings built between 50s-70s when architects were out of whack like some German cities are doing right now (Frankfurt) and replace them with some 3D printed aesthetically pleasing ones. Should be a plenty of work and those jobs could be opposite of soul crushing.
I'd like to see something like a reincarnation of the CCC. There's so much relatively unskilled labor out there that goes undone.
Further, being forced to spend time doing that makes it much harder to gain skills for, or search for, another job.
Make-work non-training jobs (though ideally real beneficial work that just has market value less than what is paid by government for it rather than obvious waste of effort) may be a same policy solution to short-term private sector dislocation where demand for work with basically-similar skill profile has dropped but is expected to rebound, but beyond that it is fairly obvious counterproductive and a trap that impedes the ability of a labor force to adapt to new needs compared to conventional means-tested welfare, which itself is not very good at that (which is one of the motivations for UBI.)
Or even stuff that has real meaning
Why do you think that maintaining safe and beautiful cities has no real meaning? Someone needs to do it. Is this just elitism?
"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it private enterprise on well tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is."
The current capitalist system is all about the individual self interest of each playing agent (company). That probably worked in the past in loosely-populated areas with lots of resources, but doesn't look like it is the way for the future.
I’d hazard to guess that most postwar US economic activity was indirectly fueled by government policy, and it has shifted in some ways to large cartels.